John Constable, Yarmouth Pier, About 1820–22. Oil paint on paper mounted on canvas; 11 1/2 × 19 1/2 in. (29.2 × 49.5 cm). Gift of the Berger Collection Educational Trust, 2018.25

image height: 11 1/2 in, 29.2100 cm; image width: 19 1/2 in, 49.5300 cm; frame height: 15 1/2 in, 39.3700 cm; frame width: 23 1/2 in, 59.6900 cm; frame depth: 2 1/4 in, 5.7150 cm

European and American Art Before 1900

European Painting and Sculpture before 1900

This object is currently on view

During the 1820s John Constable, England’s greatest landscape painter, studied his native Suffolk countryside in numerous oil sketches made in the open air. He devoted much attention in these works to clouds and sky, recording shifts of light and tone in brushwork looser and more vivid than his studio paintings. This is one such picture, which records the pier at Great Yarmouth, a seaside town in Norfolk some sixty-five miles north along the coast from Constable’s home in East Bergholt. He appears to have changed his mind about the position of the pier: the original structure can be seen faintly above its present location. Constable probably began painting the scene closer to the pier and then moved farther back and had to alter its position. 
 

With Salander-O'Reilly, New York, 1989; private collection, New Haven, Connecticut; with Michael N. Altman & Co., Inc., New York; from which acquired by William M. B. Berger and Bernadette Johnson Berger, Denver, 1998; Berger Collection Educational Trust; gifted to the Denver Art Museum, 2018. Provenance research is on-going at the Denver Art Museum and we will post information as it becomes available. Please e-mail provenance@denverartmuseum.org, if you have questions, or if you have additional information to share with us.

• “Treasures from the Berger Collection: British Paintings 1400-2000” — Denver Art Museum, 10/2/2014 – 9/9/2018